Skin and Bones
by Lucifer's Garden
Summary: Blinking, she sat up and turned to see John, soaking wet and perched outside the window above her bed, stooped forward to avoid knocking the overhanging eaves. Bender/Allison one shot


Ah yes, these two again. Gotta love me some angsty Bender/Allison fluff! I can't quite tell if this is a romance or just a very loving friendship, but either way I am determined to milk this muse for all its worth.

As per usual, _The Breakfast Club_ and its characters all belong to the late Mr. John Hughes. I'm just hijacking them for temporary artistic gratification.

Enjoy!

000

_Walking a fine line between wrong and right_

_And I know_

_There is a part of me that I try to hide_

_But I can't win_

_And I can't fight_

_I keep holding on too tight_

_Running away from the world outside_

_Now I am calling_

_Hoping you'll hear me_

_We all need somebody_

_To believe in something_

_And I won't fear this_

_When I am falling_

_We all need somebody_

_That can mend these broken bones_

"Broken Bones" – Rev Theory

_**Skin and Bones**_

It was raining, but Allison's dream was warm and bright until something tapped gently on her window.

She stirred reluctantly at first, until the taps became more insistent and the dream slipped away into the darkness. Blinking, she sat up and turned to see John perched outside the window above her bed.

He was soaking wet, stooped forward to avoid knocking the overhanging eaves. There was a tree right outside her room with thick, gnarled old branches just strong enough to support his weight while he made the considerably unsafe climb. Allison had tried to leave the side door unlocked for him, but her parents were incurably paranoid about home invasions (even in a quiet little town like Shermer) and insisted on barring every possible entrance.

All but one, conveniently located in their daughter's room – the one they never bothered to consider.

Flicking on her bedside lamp, she crawled over to slide the window open. There used to be an array of knick-knacks lining the windowsill, but after his second late-night visit some months ago, she had decided to keep the space cleared for him. He winced and hugged his side as he clambered in, pausing on the ledge to slide out of his boots and peel off his denim jacket, taking obvious care not to jostle his right arm too much. Blood streamed down his left hand, where a few shards of dark tinted glass were still imbedded. The remnants of a wayward beer bottle, Allison concluded.

"Here," she said quietly, reaching up to help him. He complied with mindless exhaustion, shifting position to grant her better access. They stripped him right down to his ratty old boxers, and Allison wondered what her parents would think if they walked in at this very moment and saw a nearly naked young man descending into her room. Her own sleeping attire – a black camisole and panties – left equally little to the imagination. But on nights like this, there was never any pressing sense of modesty between them.

She wordlessly scanned his face to assess tonight's damage. His bottom lip was split open, and there were numerous angry-looking nicks marking his jaw and cheekbones. A fresh bruise shrouded his left eye, and would probably start swelling soon. There were traces of blood under his nose, which he had obviously tried to wipe away. Then there were the glass fragments buried in his left hand – that would probably need attention first. What concerned her the most, however, was how delicately he was favouring his right side. That was a little more severe than normal, which was saying something, and her rudimentary patch job was no substitute for medical care at the hospital. But John hated hospitals and insisted that her mom's old first aid kit in the bathroom would do just fine.

As he eased down on her mattress to catch his breath, Allison took his wet clothes and dropped them in the hamper sitting in the corner of her room, a perpetual dumpsite for the wealth of possessions she had accumulated over the years (accumulated, stolen, found, the words were all interchangeable). Even her purple walls were acting mosaics, plastered from floor to ceiling with drawings, articles, Christmas lights, scarves, dream catchers, posters, and a plethora of photographs. Clothes, jewelry, school supplies, bags, shoes, makeup, candles, pill bottles, art supplies, knives, books, magazines, cassettes, movie cases, and literally hundreds of other objects cluttered nearly every available surface. It usually drove people crazy trying to navigate through it, but John was just as comfortable here as he was in his own basement. Maybe even more. He could move through her jumbled belongings with a practiced grace one would only expect to find in somebody who had been doing it for years, let alone months.

"Got any booze?" he asked, knowing perfectly well that she had stolen a bottle of Jack from her parents' liquor cabinet just for him. No matter the occasion, his visits usually included at least one form of intoxication or another.

She nodded and motioned for him to head towards the bathroom across the hall from her room. Her parents had their own ensuite, and for the most part left the main one untouched. Their room was far enough down the hall that Allison rarely worried about waking them with these late interludes. The fact that they both doped themselves up with sleeping pills before going to bed didn't hurt either. A meteor could crash outside and they wouldn't bat an eyelid.

By the time she retrieved the bottle from the wreckage in her closet and joined him, he was in the process of cleaning the wounds on his left hand, now free of shards. The sink water was tinged a rosy pink from his blood, marred by flecks of soil and glass.

Allison paused in the doorway to watch him for a moment, taking in the forward angle of his head, the frown of concentration on his face. Her eyes dropped to examine the rest his body, lingering on every fading bruise, every scar, every muscle stretched under tanned skin. There was nothing soft about him, but he was easy to look at; the way you'd look at a wild mustang or some bird of prey in flight. You just can't not.

"Why don't you ever fight back?" she finally ventured, feigning idleness.

He glanced up at her through a curtain of dark wet hair. "What?"

She moved in front of him and hopped onto the counter's edge, passing the bottle into his hand. "Your knuckles," she explained, lightly brushing her finger across the smooth bumps on his hand. "Never a single scratch on them. Don't you ever take a swing?"

John half-shrugged as he unscrewed the lid. He threw his head back and drank deeply, wincing at the whiskey's burn on the way down. "There's no point," he finally replied, coughing a little. "We don't go at it that often. It's usually over just as fast as it starts."

"You didn't fight Andy either," Allison pointed out. The first aid kit was open on the counter next to her; she reached in grabbed a few cotton balls, along with the rubbing alcohol and some bandages. "You used to take on three or four guys at a time back in middle school. Why not just one jock?"

He inched forward a little, moving to fill the space between her knees. She saw him brace himself as she brought up a moistened swab to dab at one of the little cuts on his cheek, wincing at the inevitable sting. "Like I said, I would have killed him."

Allison rolled her eyes a little. _Of course you would have_. John might be tough, and he sure as hell fought dirty, but he didn't have a shred of Andy's discipline.

There had been a time when it hurt too much to talk about Andy, and that day – that Saturday all those months ago, and the things they took away from it. Andy, Claire, the paths they thought they were forging. Almost a total loss, but not really. They still had each other, at least. And Brian. Her heart brimmed at the mere thought of him, the scrawny, blond, well-intentioned dork.

"What about middle school?" she pressed.

"How do you know that, anyway?" he demanded gruffly. "Were we in the same class?"

"We had different teachers." She hesitated. This had always made her feel a little guilty, even now, years later. "I saw them jump you after school a few times, trying to steal your shoes or lunch money, or something. You always fought back like crazy. Broke Luke Baylor's nose that one time, even with his two friends on top of you."

John smirked at that. It quickly melted into a grimace as she began disinfecting the other nicks along his jaw. "Yeah, well. Rage and desperation aren't the same thing. That's a whole different kind of fight."

Allison froze, her stomach twisting painfully at the straightforwardness of it.

_I would have killed him._

"I don't think," she began slowly, fighting the lump in her throat, "that there's anything you could do to your dad that he hasn't done to you first."

He took another long drink and set the bottle aside, closing his eyes. "Let's not get into this, Ally. I told you, there's no point. Okay?" he sighed. Something in his voice sounded so old and frail that it made Allison tear up a little. She nodded anyway and resumed cleaning him up.

The two of them were silent for a while. He kept drinking, and seemed to want to look everywhere but at her. Allison finished disinfecting the cuts, and moved on to wrap his hand in gauze. She noticed that his breathing was getting a little bit laboured, and frowned. "How's your side?"

"It's fine," he lied, without missing a beat. She gave him a look and pulled him a little closer so she could rest her hand on his ribs. His skin was cool from the wind and rain outside, making her shiver a little.

He sucked in a quick breath, but she didn't miss the fleeting look of pain on his face. "You might have cracked a rib or two," she told him sternly. "I really wish you'd go see a doctor."

He pulled a face. "Nah, just gimme a bandage. I'll be fine."

There was no sense in arguing with him, as Allison knew. Shaking her head, she nevertheless busied herself wrapping a few strips of cloth around his chest and stomach to keep everything in place. "How's that?"

"Better," he mumbled, rolling his shoulder to test his range. His words were starting to sound a bit sluggish, and his blinking looked more forced than normal; Allison's eyes flickered down to the bottle and noted a substantial drop in its level.

"When was the last time you ate?" she asked. It came out more accusatory than she meant, but she had told him a thousand times over that he shouldn't drink so much on an empty stomach.

He picked up on her tone, and scowled at her. "I didn't come here for a lecture."

"No," she countered, narrowing her eyes. "You came here for a mom."

Instant remorse flooded her as he took an unsteady step backwards, looking as though she had just delivered a sucker punch to his gut. She opened her mouth to take it back, but promptly closed it. With John, no words could ever be taken back. They were all anybody had that was worth parting with, and they meant everything to him, whether he could admit it or not.

He turned away, nearly clipping his shoulder on the doorframe as he stumbled blindly back towards her room.

"John –"

"Fuck off."

Her eyes stung. "Please don't go."

"Why?" he growled, whirling ungracefully to glare at her in the dark. "So you can stand there and look sorry at me? No thanks. I don't need that, not from you."

Allison blinked, spilling the tears and losing whatever composure she had been trying to keep. "You don't even know what you're talking about," she whispered.

"I know you expect me to cry on your shoulder and tell you all about the shit in my life, like you have any fuckin' clue about it," he shot back hoarsely, struggling to keep his voice down.

Twisting away, pacing aimlessly around her rooom, he was no longer speaking to her – just talking in her general vicinity. Just like that, she was invisible again.

"That's all anybody ever wants," he went on. "I'm so goddamn sick of it. 'Looks like Carl Bender really let that boy have it again! If only poor John would talk to us'. _Talk_. What fuckin' good is that gonna do me, huh? You think there's anything we can say to each other that's gonna fix this? My old man and me, we're fucked up. We're fucked up, Ally, and everybody knows it."

He paused, looking almost shocked at himself. Allison didn't breathe, watching his expression shift fluidly from anger to sheer dumbfounded loss.

Licking his lips, he forced himself into some kind of stillness. When he next spoke, his voice was so low that she could barely hear. "It's just skin, Ally. A few bones. That's all."

She closed her eyes for a moment. "It's _your_ skin. _Your_ bones. And in case you hadn't noticed, you're kind of important to me."

His eyes snapped back towards her, almost affronted. It was a cheap shot on her part. Nothing could disarm him faster than kindness.

She reached up to wipe at her face, embarrassed by her tears as they poured out in fresh waves. "You never fight back," she said again. Her voice was dangerously close to a sob, and she didn't know if either of them could handle that right now. "I don't really understand why. Or I won't pretend that I do. Just . . . please don't ever convince yourself that you deserve what he does to you, John. Because you don't, not even a little bit. You have so much more inside of you than he can imagine, and it scares him. It scares _me_."

Had she been looking up at him, she would have seen him cross the room to her in three long strides. But she wasn't looking, and whimpered when suddenly she was in his arms, feet off the ground, face pressed into his shoulder so tight that it squashed her nose to the side.

"I'm kinda drunk," he breathed into her hair, "so don't read too much into this. I just felt like shutting you up."

His low voice and the heat of his breath on her neck sent a river of delicious chills down her spine, and suddenly she couldn't quite tell if she was laughing or crying anymore.

"I love you," she choked.

Something swelled up in his chest, but he kept his voice carefully restrained. "I know."

"And you don't have to say it back."

"I know," he said again, more emphatically. He set her back down on the ground, looking pleased with himself and uncomfortable at the same time. "But . . . yeah."

Allison smiled wetly up at him and took his hand in hers, guiding him towards the bed. It was still pouring outside, and the last thing he needed was a long walk home in the dark rain with busted ribs and the weight of defeat on his shoulders.

John hesitated, but his weariness had finally caught up with him and he simply had no energy to protest. She climbed under the covers and scooted over to the far side of the bed to make room for him, thrilling at the sensation of his bulk sliding in next her. The mattress was not built to accommodate two people, let alone a young man his size, but she rolled onto her side so that her back nestled against his front. This was new territory for them, and all at once she sensed how uncertain he was in syncing their positions. He was trying to get comfortable, but not _too_ comfortable.

She reached back and patiently grabbed his arm to guide it around her waist. _This is okay._

"Go to sleep, John" she teased.

He tilted his head forward, planting a feather-soft kiss on the back of her neck, and let silence fill in the rest.

_Damn it. Love you back._

FIN


End file.
